"Forbidden Archaeology" (ANTH 291): A Nearly Complete Syllabus

8/17/2016

My Forbidden Archaeology class will have its first meeting this Friday morning. As usual, I've waited until almost the last minute to attempt to finalize the syllabus. But that attempt has now been made, and I still have a day to spare. Go me.

As anyone who has ever created a syllabus from scratch knows, there comes a point when the rubber meets the road and you have to cease thinking vaguely and start nailing down the specifics. I've still got a few more nails to drive in (you'll notice some "TBA's" in the day-by-day readings, and I'm still working on a couple of additions to the guest list), but this is more or less what we'll be driving this semester. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors. It's been a long day. One of my kids woke me up at 2:30 and then again at 3:30 and I wasn't able to get back to sleep afterwards.

I got several offers of guest participation that I won't be able to fully capitalize this time around. If you emailed me about the class and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I sincerely apologize. As I've mentioned before, the students will be writing several blog posts. I hope that several of you that I was not able to include as formal "guests" of the class will perhaps be willing to work with one or more students individually. I'll be in touch!

Finally, I'm sure some of you out there will, for whatever reasons, be unhappy with what the students will be reading. And I'm sure some of you will tell me about it. Keep in mind that I did not chose readings to provide "answers." I chose them to illustrate points, show contrasts, spark questions, and provoke arguments. While we will be discussing and dissecting some of the readings quite closely in class, others are there simply for background. I'll learn a lot about what works well and what doesn't as I get to know the students and we work our way through the course.

Stay tuned!

10 Comments

Gunn

8/17/2016 02:48:45 pm

Hi Andy, just to let you know that I'm willing to work with any of your students on the following "fringe" subjects:

Medieval Norse stoneholes, of course. "They are the glue holding all the Norse activity and history together up here; a necessary base-point for understanding everything else Norse and medieval in the Upper Midwest region."

Medieval Norse waterways. Critical to any understanding of the oddities up here, and why they are found here, is the knowledge that medieval Norsemen discovered a huge waterway circle being completed or hooked together here. The beginning ocean sources (Hudson Bay and Vinland through the Great Lakes) dwindle down and meet by the SD/MN border...which is precisely why medieval Norse evidences are found here. Doesn't this make sense?

The very real Medieval Norse Code-stone. I can prove the intentions of the medieval code-maker in using stonehole rocks to encode a proposed medieval surveying and possible land claim, where a river empties into the beginnings of the MN River. The river being marked reaches farthest north into the MN River watershed, which is the significance. The same significance was visited by late 1800's railroad surveyors. An expensive ferrous-only metal detector shows that something made of steel or iron is deeply buried exactlywhere the Code-stone indicates something is buried.

Andy, these are three areas I would be happy to help a few of your students delve into. Hopefully, some of your students will come to see that there really is "forbidden archaeology." I think there is a palpable bias against the Kensington Runestone, which results in hindering its study.

I can see no valid reasons for questioning the message inscribed on its surfaces. Much abuse has occurred over the years because of trying to interpret what the message is saying. Again, my own personal view is that the message should be taken 100% at face value. As odd as it sounds, not many lately have been willing to do this.

Gunn

8/17/2016 08:14:06 pm

I read through the syllabus, and for the section dealing with the Kensington Runestone; I can only say that it's kind of a shame that no one could be found to defend the KRS...someone like anthropologist/archaeologist Alice Beck Kehoe, a rare professional who made room for medieval Norse explorers into America's interior.

I do not blame you for this, Andy, as there is apparently no one around to defend the KRS. In spite of this, I myself believe the message inscribed is true, and many, many others believe this as well...thousands of people, not at all dull.

However, I think good will come from your class, since truth carefully laid out will have lasting impressions on the "youts." I think some "fringe" history truth will come spilling forth from your class, which will be a good thing. I understand what you are doing and appreciate the concepts you are shooting for. I understand that arguments will be made for various positions as a way of establishing a good search through history.

I'm just saying (again) that it's too bad the KRS doesn't have a current defender to go head-to-head with the current collection of KRS confusers....

Andy White

8/18/2016 09:49:42 am

Hi Gunn,

I appreciate you comment and your offer. I'll let you know how things are going as the semester progresses. Hopefully I can get a student interested in looking into your stone hole data.

I understand what you're saying about the lack of a "KRS defender." If you'll remember, though, I had one who then dropped out and I had to adjust the entire syllabus as a result. The whole point of the class is to argue claims based on evidence and logic, and we're still going to do that. I will prep the students as best as I can to grill the guests with tough questions no matter what position they take. It's about learning, not a "trial" to determine the authenticity of the KRS.

Gunn

8/19/2016 09:39:26 am

Well...Wolter couldn't (past tense) be considered a true defender of the KRS. He is a confused defender of its authenticity, but he doesn't even believe the stone's simple message. At best, he is a partial defender; but, in the end, which is now, he has attached so much painful spiritual nonsense to the KRS that he cannot possibly be considered a defender. (Just interjecting some reality into the notion that Wolter is/was a KRS defender.)

Gunn

8/19/2016 11:06:04 am

In fairness, Wolter did include some very compelling local evidences in his "Hooked X" book, which your students will be able to see. Included is a photo of what Wolter thought might be a ritual bathing basin, with an attached stone altar, found near Wilmot, SD. This particular "Norse evidence" includes several stonehole rocks in the immediate area. Not far away as the crow flies, deeply carved and aged Norse-appearing petroglyphs can be found, such as a carving of a Scandinavian drinking horn like those seen in European museums.

Judi Rudebush, from Milbank, SD, is the person to talk to more about this, and she's also done a lot of work with several other people regarding the compilation of stonehole data, which helped me immensely during my first few years of research.

I wanted to point something out about this proposed basin/altar: I don't think it has a religious purpose at all, but rather a commonplace medieval purpose, that being a blacksmithing quenching basin, with attached stone anvil.

Isn't this what all the recent interest was at Point Rosee, within the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway, drawing closer and closer to America? Yes, it is. A probable Viking iron-working site was discovered several months ago, showing similar metal-working rocks, which can also be seen within a medieval Greenland ruin, if I am not mistaken. Overlooked so far in all this is the possible medieval Norse blacksmithing operation intended for the site near Wilmot, SD, which your students will see a photo of within Wolter's assigned X book.

Apparently, America and a few states within America don't care as much about our history as the authorities in Newfoundland, and it seems to be true that some archaeology is actually forbidden up in this region. But, maybe it's just an abysmal lack of interest more than outright hinderance.

Jim

8/17/2016 10:22:27 pm

Looks like you put a lot of work put into it. I like it, looks first and foremost educational but also fun and interesting. I assume no one calls you stodgy ?
Will us poor outsiders get to at least read the students blogs ?

Andy White

8/18/2016 09:51:56 am

Yes, the blog posts will be on a website that we'll create for the class. They'll go through several steps of editing/critique before they're available online. This is a new class, so I don't yet know things will go. I'll keep you posted.

Joe Scales

8/18/2016 07:55:21 am

Alice Kehoe, who is not a geologist, gave Wolter's geological findings the benefit of the doubt in her attempts at reconsidering the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone. You will find no other independent and accomplished geologist willing to do so.

As a point of interest, when Wolter posted notes on his blog from Kehoe when he submitted drafts of his work to her, she begged him not to go in the Dan Brown/da Vinci Code direction as it would harm his credibility. This advice, like most from the other scholars posted, went ignored.

Harold Edwards

8/18/2016 11:48:02 am

You overestimate geologists. The level of sophistication required to understand Wolter’s work is beyond them. The terminal degree for professional geologists is a Masters in some sub-specialty. Undergraduate geology is spread too thin over too broad an area for one to make a living at it. The chief problem with Wolter’s work is not that he is wrong, but that he is not right. He presents very superficial work and does not connect the dots. It takes a person expert in several fields or someone like myself willing to do the background work to evaluate the problems with his work. Therefore most geologist just roll their eyes and bite their tongues.

Some issues:

Wolter never demonstrated that the KRS is a glacial boulder. When it came into his lab in 2000 there was no way for him to know that. The last thing a geologist would do is classify it as a glacial boulder. 99.99999. . .% of the rocks coming into any lab are not glacial boulders. To make that determination requires seeing the rock in the field in its natural setting. So how did he determine that? He does not ever give us that information. This is not a trivial matter. If the KRS is not a glacial boulder it is a fake. The area surrounding the discovery site has no rock outcrops, and someone in 1362 could only use a glacial boulder.

Wolter never demonstrated that the rock is a graywacke. The analysis that he quotes from Ojakangas is insufficient to determine that. (Dr. Ojakangas is an ex-professor of Wolter. He is retired from teaching at University of Minnesota at Duluth.) There is no particle size or texture information given to justify any identification. He does not even show the rock is a sedimentary rock. Graywackes are a variety of sandstone, a sedimentary rock.

Wolter presents a Q-F-RF (quartz-feldspar-rock fragment) diagram again from Ojakangas. Unless they are sedimentary petrographers, most geologists would not know what they are except for perhaps some vague memory from their undergraduate days. These diagrams are used by sedimentary petrographers to provenance the sandstone. Geologists use the word “provenance” different from archaeologists. For archaeologists the provenance of a rock means the outcrop from which it came. For geologists it means the source of the sediments that make up the rock. Typically they already know where the outcrop is; they got their samples from it! If one took graywacke analyses from around the world many would plot exactly at the same point as the KRS. This diagram is meaningless.

From this diagram Wolter infers that his glacial boulder came from the east--the area near Lake Superior–the Animikie basin and is therefore of Precambrian age. There are graywackes in the bedrock in that direction. There is one problem with this: The glacial material that covers the findsite is from the Des Moines lobe and came from Manitoba to the northwest. Therefore if the graywacke is a glacial boulder it is more likely from younger rocks of Paleozoic or Cretaceous age. I know of no graywackes in those areas. Here are some references if you care:

Leverett, Frank (1932), “Quarternary Geology of Minnesota and Parts of Adjacent States,” U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 161, Washington, 149 pages.

Harris, Kenneth L. (2006b), “Surficial Geology” REGIONAL HYDROGEOLOGIC ASSESSMENT RHA-6, PART A Plate 1 (Map)

Harris, Kenneth and James A. Berg (2006), “Quaternary Stratigraphy” REGIONAL HYDROGEOLOGIC ASSESSMENT RHA-6, PART A, Plate 2 (Map)

Of course Wolter cited nothing. Evidently Wolter did not and does not do his homework, the very necessary background reading.

Sticker

8/20/2016 06:14:01 am

Man, I wish I could have taken this class when I was young!

"Forbidden Archaeology" (ANTH 291): A Nearly Complete Syllabus

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